I had no time to wait through all of the various lines, so I focused on what seemed like the most interesting thing on the menu: a long twisting pathway leading directly beneath the temple that you follow slowly, in pitch blackness, feeling your way until you can grasp the “Key to Paradise” (the official name is “lock” but the guards called it a key -- and naturally this is the Buddhist paradise, not some more earthly one). They tell you to feel for it along the wall on the right at hip level, and they warn you in no uncertain terms against using your cell phone to light the way (“One guy did that and two months later he was in a traffic accident!” the guard said. The people around me smiled at that, but everybody kept their phones sheathed.). When it’s this crowded, of course, you can hear the person in front of you flip it, so you know exactly where it is. A friend from Matsumoto was very jealous when she heard I’d been able to find it - she hadn’t on her school trip years ago. Since no photos are permitted inside, here is that section in the pamphlet I received with my ticket, showing the stairway entrance and a diagram of the route.